kaleidotrope

Hey neat! In their summation of 2007 fantasy, in the terrific-looking Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (newly available from St. Martin’s Press), Kelly Link and Gavin Grant mention Kaleidotrope by name:

Kaleidotrope, edited by Fred Coppersmith, is a new zine of similar ilk. Two issues came out in 2007 and we hope to see it going along the same steadily rising path of EV, Flytrap, etc.

I can hardly blame Ellen Datlow for not mentioning the zine, as Kaleidotrope hasn’t featured much, if any, real horror. (Although that’s something I’d genuinely like to change going forward.)

In all, it’s not quite as nice as seeing a story from Kaleidotrope in the book’s table of contents, or even in the honorable mentions — where a few past contributors do get singled out for quality work elsewhere — but it’s still pretty keen. The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror is essential reading every year, and it’s a thrill to see Kaleidotrope acknowledged, however briefly, in its pages.

Cross-posted to the Kaleidotrope weblog.

I guess this means I have to start working on issue #6? Copies of #5 are available now. Despite my printer woes, it’s a really solid issue — 76 pages of great stories and poems. Check it out, won’t you?

It’s official. I hate Kinkos.

I could live with their long lines and not very helpful customer service. I could almost live with their high prices. But what I can’t live with is the fact that they screwed up half my copies. There are wrinkles and creases in about half of Kaleidotrope issues I had printed, making some of them illegible and all of them unusuable. Oh, and I also got a nasty papercut when leafing through each of the copies to check.

Naturally, I seem to have lost — or more likely accidentally threw out — my receipt. So chances are I’m stuck with these bad copies (and their cost) and won’t have enough good ones left to fulfill all my orders or send to all my contributors. I’ve already sent a few copies out — mostly to subscribers, before I noticed this problem — but I’m going to need to make replacements quickly.

And hopefully find somewhere else to do it than Kinkos.

If this were a Livejournal, my “current mood” would be “very pissed off with just a hint of panic.”

I’ve updated the Kaleidotrope website, with revised submission guidelines, subscription details, reviews, and the upcoming October issue’s table of contents — all on a brand new domain! All the old links should redirect automatically. Any thoughts?

I’d also like to note, while I’m at it, that subscription costs will be changing slightly in 2009. To reflect the rising cost of postage and printing — as well as the increased number of pages in each issue — a single copy will cost $5 instead of the current $4. (Copies mailed anywhere outside of North America will cost $8 instead of the current $6.50.) However, a 2-year subscription of four issues (currently priced at $16 and $25) will only cost $18 (or $28 international) — a 10% discount off the combined price!

This will not affect current subscribers or anyone who subscribes to the zine between now and December 31, 2008. And it won’t affect the current prices of earlier issues — of which I still have several back issues, if you’re interested in picking up a copy of your own.

I’ll post reminders about the price changes again as we get closer to the end of the year. The thing to remember is this: you’ll save money if you subscribe to the zine, and you’ll save even more if you subscribe before the new prices take effect.

[cross-posted to the Kaleidotrope weblog]

Would anyone happen to know how to close a Pixish assignment? I’ve picked and contacted the winners for mine, and I’m done judging, but I can’t get it to close. Maybe it happens automatically, after like a week — and if so, fine — but I can’t find any information, and they’ve yet to answer my e-mail.